On November 13th, a delegation of four members led by Dr. Jonathan Bacon of the Graduate School of Letters department-wide partner University of Sussex visited Hokkaido University.
The head of the International Affairs Unit, Michelle La Fay, guided them during their day-long stay at Hokudai.
In the morning, they visited the Office of International Affairs, and met with the OIA staff who explained about the Hokkaido Universal Campus Initiative (HUCI). The University of Sussex delegation mentioned many similarities with Hokudai, and were particularly interested in the international cooperative educational programs such as the Summer Institute (SI) and Learning Satellite (LS).
Later in the morning, the Vice-Dean of the Research Facility of Agriculture, Dr. Takashi Inoue joined the staff of the Global Institution for Collaborative Research and Education (GI-CoRE) in order to explain about the organization and the research and education system of GI-CoRE and the delegation members exchanged information about areas of interest in their research.
The Graduate School of Letters arranged lunch with the University of Sussex students studying here at Hokudai and talked with them about their experiences.
From the left: Michelle La Fay (Head of the International Affairs Unit), Professor Kei Sasaki (Vice-Dean of the Graduate School of Letters), Professor Jonathan Bacon (Director of International Recruitment & Development, Acting Head of the School of Life Sciences), Professor Cherith Moses, (Director of International Recruitment & Development, Social Science) , Georgie Chesman (International Partnerships Officer), Emily Sinclair (Head of International Programmes) , Adam Termote (University of Sussex student). In the front, from the left, Ms. Namiko Yoshimoto (International Affairs Unit, Out-bound Program) , Ms. Naoko Kuritani (Research Management Office)
Adam Termote meets with the staff from the International Programmes and tells them about his life as a foreign student at Hokudai.
After lunch, the delegation visited Dean Asahiko Shirakizawa who gave a brief explanation and outline of the Graduate School of Letters.
After the meeting with the Dean, Professor Ogawa (Human Sciences Division, Research and Education Centre for Brain Science) gave a short lecture about his research and explained about the Research and Education Centre for Brain Science. As a neuroscience specialist, Professor Bacon was extremely interested in the latest brain science research and the two specialists had a lively conversation.
After Professor Ogawa’s talk, Professor Kurata (Ethics and Applied Ethics, Assistant Director for the Centre of Sustainability) and Professor Tsuji (Centre of Sustainability) talked about the work of the Centre and the international educational system in detail. Dr. Cherith Moses from the School of Global Studies was impressed by the mutual long-distance learning system for real-time overseas classes and asked many questions about the technology and the partner schools.
At the end of the day, there was time for Graduate School of Letters / Faculty of Letters students interested in studying abroad at the University of Sussex to talk with the Head of the International Programmes, Ms. Sinclair. The students were able to get important information which helped ease some of their worries about studying abroad.